Why am I so afraid?
On fear and stopping and starting in the creative process (and let's be real, life)
I once gave a talk about triumphing in the face of fear. It was an inspirational and personal talk about the climber and base jumper Steph Davis and about me learning to ski and about my process of making art. In it, I shared photos of the mountains and the desert and drawings I’d recently made.
I’ve thought deeply about fear over the years—I consider myself a student of it. It’s wild looking back now, maybe five or six years after giving that talk, to see how little even then I knew about working with and befriending fear (a sentiment I'm sure I'll still hold five or ten or 20 years from now, looking back at this moment).
I used to think the way to interact with fear was to push through it. To identify what was real, what wasn’t real, and just move forward anyway. In a sense, my method of dealing with fears that came up was either to avoid them (and therefore stay stuck) or dismiss and run past them (and in its own way, avoid feeling fear by pushing myself into action).
Sometimes the second tactic backfired, like the time I tried to force myself down Lower Bushwacker, a steep bumped-out double black run that towered above my condo in Telluride, and the quickest way to get home after a long day of skiing. That attempt led to a meltdown, heart racing toward the edge of a panic attack, my mind screaming over and over “I can’t do this, I can’t do this” after dropping into the run and before I’d even approached the first bump.
My ex-husband was incredibly gentle and patient with me when this would happen. He’d tell me I didn’t have to do anything I didn’t want to. He’d tell me I was capable and I could handle it. It felt easier to navigate my internal terrain with him by my side. And of course, it’s not that I didn’t want to do it. It’s that I did, but I was terrified.
This is a pattern that has happened repeatedly for me—the longing for a new edge or goal, followed swiftly by the deep and incredibly powerful feelings of fear and discomfort, the storytelling that I can’t handle it, the backing off or muscling through. Although it sometimes didn't work, it often ultimately did. It’s how I’d learned to ride a mountain bike, how I learned to ride a motorcycle, how I started a dance company. Slowly, carefully, painfully, haltingly, stopping and starting, and relying on so much emotional support from others.
That day on the slope, I sidestepped back up the 30 feet I’d dropped down, foisting one ski up and then the other, sideways up the mountain. It was tough slow work, climbing back up. I was winded and tired when I made it back to the comfort of the easier blue run. I skied down and met my ex at the bottom, on the gentle hill above our house. I felt low, embarrassed, defeated, ashamed.
The part that haunts me from that experience and so many others I’ve had like it is that—I can do it. I’m an excellent, experienced skier, even though I learned as an adult. I can ski steep runs. I can ski bump runs. I love to learn and perfect technique. But, approaching my edge like that knocks the wind out of my confidence. It’s not that I can’t do the run, it’s just that I think I can’t. It’s not that I don’t have or can’t acquire the skill, it’s that I don’t have the faith in myself. I get tied up in my own shame and fear and negative self-talk, shutting myself and my flow down.
Last week I finished reading Yung Pueblo's book, Lighter, and in it he writes “Fear is the craving for safety.” Fear is the emotion I most often experience when sitting down to work on my art. And so, here I ask myself: what is the unsafe thing my art is edging me toward? Being known? Being seen? Being vulnerable to criticism? It always comes back to that.
Recently I'm learning that there are other ways to work with fear than to push. Other ways of creating than to force. I'm learning to let go and soften, to meet my fears and tend to the wounds that create them with compassion.
Recently I'm learning that rest is a part of it. That nourishment is a part of it. How sometimes the fastest way to an outcome is to stop and then start again later. Yesterday I wanted to write, but after a long, tiring day at work, what I really needed was to put my hands in the earth and plant zinnias, feed my body fresh vegetables from my CSA, go exercise at my sister's gym. Only after all of that did my spirit say, you know, I'd really like to write, I'd really like to write for a few minutes now. And before I knew it I'd reached my word count for the week (I'm collaborating on a novel with my lover, and we each have a weekly quota to write). Up until that point my body had been all resistance, all no, all chalky exhaustion. It was the rest that brought me back to inspiration and flow.
I suppose you could say I'm beginning to see that the stopping and the starting isn't so wrong after all, that this ebb and flow is natural, necessary, reflective, the very cycle of creation itself.
Writing + reflection prompts
~ What is your relationship to fear?
~ How does fear inform your actions and reactions?
~ The last time you felt fear, how did you navigate it?
My favorite books on fear + creative practice, the ones I am always rereading
Art + Fear by David Bayles & Ted Orland (which my dad gave me as a teenager)
The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron (my bible)
Make Your Art No Matter What by Beth Pickens